


Off the Beaten Track

by springburn



Series: The Thick of It mini-fics [31]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Car Accidents, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Marriage, Medical Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 02:56:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4812344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springburn/pseuds/springburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malcolm has finished his book. He wants to take Sam on a romantic weekend in the Scottish Highlands........</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off the Beaten Track

**Author's Note:**

> This was a five word prompt from Petersgal.
> 
> The prompt words were......Malcolm. Sam. Lost. Blood. Car. 
> 
> Well, there's a challenge I couldn't resist. It's trauma based again, because I write what I know!   
> Brilliant prompt from my chief 'prompt-meister' !! Thank you!!!!

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK.

 

"For fucks sake!" Malcolm hit the dashboard with his palm.  
"Isn't this the same fucking crossroads? But from a different direction?"  
"I think you're right Malc.....we've been round in a massive loop!"  
"Bollocks! 20 fucking miles! Where IS this fucking shit hole?" 

"TURN RIGHT. ONE HUNDRED YARDS."

"And you can shut the fuck up too! " he jabbed the Sat Nav with a finger.  
"Fucking poncy voiced two twatted whore!"  
Sam tried to disguise a grin.  
"Ooooo. Pardon me! While I wave my little snuffety boxy hand here!"  
He moved his hand under his nose with a theatrical flourish.  
Sam stifled a laugh.  
"Why can't a Sat Nav have a Billy Connelly voice? Why? Hey?   
TURN RIGHT YOU USELESS FUCKING CUNT!   
That's what I want to hear, not Madame fucking Hoity Toity!"  
Sam held her stomach and dissolved into fits of giggles, as her husband huffed and sat back in the seat, arms folded, face a thunder cloud.  
When she could eventually articulate normally again, she considered their options.  
"Well, we've been that way, so we know it brings us right back here....so let's try the other way!  
What could possibly go wrong?"   
Malcolm laughed, threw the car into gear and set off once more.

oOo

A romantic long weekend.......that was the idea.   
The book was finished, deadlines met. Thank God!  
As with everything he did, Malcolm threw himself into the process with reckless abandon.   
Just as he had at Number 10.......then his marriage......fatherhood.....and now his writing......all or nothing.   
Drained.   
He felt wrung out and he was sure he'd neglected his wife.   
Playing second fiddle.   
It didn't sit well with him, and he needed a break, he needed her......  
......Close.   
Where he could give her his undivided attention.   
His sister Nancy had come up with the idea.   
"Come up to Scotland, leave the kids with us. It'll be great for them to spend time with their cousins."  
So they'd done just that.   
Malcolm found a remote croft cottage. Looked lovely on the website. Off the beaten track. Near a Loch.   
He was looking forward to long walks, much longer nights, a real log fire. Blankets.   
Cocoa and marshmallows......all that shit.   
He knew Sam would love it.....because that's the kind of woman she was......nothing she liked better than having him all to herself......and snuggling! 

oOo

"This can't be fucking right......the road is turning into a farm track.......it's getting narrower and narrower. If we go much further we won't even be able to turn round. I'll have to back the fuck up, all the way back to the proper road!"   
They rounded a sharp bend.   
Hedges lining the road on either side. Pine woodland away to the left.  
Sam clutched Malcolm's arm.  
"What's that? In the road?"   
He pulled over.   
"Looks like an animal."   
Malcolm got out and approached cautiously. Sam following.   
It was a Red Deer hind. Dead.   
"Has it been shot?" Sam peered down.  
"No. It's been hit. Fucking hard by the looks of it."   
"We'll have to move it out of the way."   
Malcolm frowned,   
"I wonder what hit it..........."  
As he voiced this thought, his eyes travelled down the track, following a line of skid marks he could see ploughing through the mud and gravel.   
"SSSSSHHHIITT! SAM.......IT'S JUST HAPPENED. HOLY FUCK!"   
He started to run.   
Sam followed the direction of his gaze and saw it as he did.   
A car.   
The skid trail lead into the ditch.  
Upside down where it had flipped over completely.  
Wheels still spinning.   
A tangle of leaves and twigs and brambles.   
Engine still running.  
An acrid smell of burning rubber.   
Malcolm reached the ditch and immediately began to scramble down, heedless of the thorns and nettles which tore at his clothes.   
"Malcolm! Be careful! Oh God!"   
He slithered to the side of the car, and peered in through the grimy window.   
His heart stopped.   
In the back......a baby, strapped securely in a car seat. Suspended, upside down.  
Bawling.   
The driver, a woman, bleeding badly, dazed but still conscious.   
"SAM! Get down here......quick!"   
His wife plunged down through the undergrowth, legs and arms scratched and stung.   
Reaching Malcolm's side, breathless and bedraggled.  
He was already wrenching open the car door.   
"You're small, darling, can you crawl in the back? Release the car seat......not the baby, pull the whole thing out......just release the straps Sam."  
The roof of the vehicle was flattened and battered somewhat, but Sam managed to fight her way inside, and fumbled the webbing straps until they came free.   
Cooing softly to the child as she did so.  
There was not a mark on it.   
Carefully turning and pulling she bought the whole contraption out onto the grass.   
"If it's yelling it's okay," Malcolm cried, "but we have to get her out."  
He turned back to the injured woman.   
Sam sniffed, wrinkling her nose.   
"I can smell petrol Malcolm. Can you turn off the engine?"   
Tendrils of smoke were rising from the underside of the car.  
The driver door was folded in on itself and refused to budge.   
Inside the woman moaned in pain.   
Malcolm, looked around him wildly, clawing at the door to no avail and he knew kicking it was a futile gesture.  
A large rock caught his eye.   
"Sam, get in the back again, pull that blanket over her, I'm going to smash it."  
She obeyed without question, covering the woman's head with the picnic rug.   
Her husband hit the window repeatedly until it suddenly shattered, little squares of glass showering everywhere, covering both him and the woman inside.   
He reached in to turn the ignition key, but it was snapped off at the hilt, still in the keyhole.   
"FUCK!"   
"Sam, you're going to have to go get help. There must be a farm or something further down the track, there's no fucking mobile signal, I know, coz I tried google maps a few minutes ago, and I haven't a fucking clue where we are..... Can you do that? Take the baby seat, up, out of the way. The kid'll be alright. Just fucking run.....yeah? Just fucking run."   
She didn't hesitate. Hands and feet scrabbling back up the side of the steep bank.   
Filthy and wet, she regained the road.   
Setting off down track as fast as she could.  
After a mile or so, she spied a farmhouse, her relief was palpable.   
Barking wildly, a large dog bounded out to meet her, but Sam ignored it as she reached the door and hammered on it wildly.   
Calling, yelling out.  
"Hello? Anyone there? Hello? Anyone? Please."  
A ruddy faced man came running, wondering what on earth was up.  
He regarded the filthy, scratched and desperate woman who stood there, in surprise and then concern.  
Almost beyond speech, Sam spluttered out what had happened, pointing back the way she'd come.   
His wife appeared behind him, blanched with shock and immediately grabbed the land line phone in the kitchen, to ring for an ambulance.   
Sam leaned against the door frame, breathing heavily, taking a moment to recover........  
..........when from behind her, an almighty explosion rent the air.........

 

.....The eerie silence that followed, seemed to last for an hour, although in reality it was merely seconds.  
Sheer and utter horror hit Sam. Her eyes wide. Hands to her mouth.   
"MALCOLM! OH MY GOD! MALCOLM."  
Sam screamed.   
She screamed again, forgetting everyone and everything else she began to sprint.   
She ran as if the hounds of hell were chasing her.   
As she ran she repeated his name over and over again.  
"Malcolm. Malcolm. Malcolm. Please God. Please God. Not my Malcolm."  
More blasts followed and a pall of thick black smoke rose up from behind the screen of the trees.   
As each ripping sound reverberated, it spurred her on, pure adrenaline.   
She HAD to reach him. Every second might count. 

Rounding the curve in the road, she could see the blaze, small bursts still firing off from what was left of the vehicle  
Debris everywhere. Acrid smoke billowing in dense clouds.   
She could hear the screaming of the baby.   
"Oh God! NO! Malcolm!"   
She couldn't see him. She could see nothing. Nothing but destruction.

Then a movement.   
On the grass verge, twenty feet from the ditch.   
A flash of a white shirt.   
Sam's heart pounded in her chest.   
As she drew nearer she could see her husband.  
Sitting on the bank, cradling the woman.   
"MALCOLM! MALCOLM!" She screamed his name again, as a sob of relief left her.   
He was alive.   
At that moment she cared about absolutely nothing else. Not the woman, the baby, anything.   
He was alive.   
"MALCOLM!"   
He was covered in blood, the white of his shirt, his hands, his face, and peppered with hot fragments from the car as he'd tried to shield the woman from the blast.   
She was only feet away from them now, when he suddenly pushed the woman from where she lay across his lap and bent his head over her, his ear to her chest.  
"NO!"  
Sam reached his side, as Malcolm tore open her top and thumped her chest with his fist, hard. Right over the sternum.   
Then put his ear down again.   
"FUCK! She's stopped breathing Sam." He cried.   
Placing one hand on top of the other, fingers interlaced, in the same spot he began to press down, and release, counting as he did so.   
Sam could see his hands were lacerated and bleeding, torn and burned.   
Taking the injured woman's chin and pushing back her head, he pinched her nose and covered her mouth with his own. Blowing air into her lungs.   
Time seemed to slow and almost stop, as Sam knelt beside the pair, ignoring the crying of the baby, as Malcolm fought to save the life of the mother.  
Chest presses. Mouth to mouth. Counting aloud, he worked on her.  
"COME ON! COME ON!" He cried, "BREATHE. FUCKING BREATHE."   
Sam was unaware that she was weeping uncontrollably, tears streaking her filthy face.   
With a sudden convulsive jerk, the girl took a long juddering breath, and began to cough.   
"YES! FUCKING YES! " Malcolm lifted her slightly, propping her head up by sliding his jacket beneath it.   
"Welcome back to the land of the living!" He growled......"thought you were a fucking gonna there."   
The young lass looked up at him, confused, but very much alive, and gave a slight smile.   
Just as Sam unstrapped and cradled the baby, who had bawled it's head off throughout the entire proceedings, an ambulance appeared, bouncing slowly along the rough track.   
The man from the farmhouse, who watched in stunned silence as Malcolm saved the life of the young woman, came forward and took the child from her.  
"It's young Morag, from Coomb Farm," he said quietly, "she was on her way to see the missus."

The paramedics came and took over, Malcolm got to his feet and swayed slightly.   
"Hold me, Sam."   
He leaned into her, still coated with dried blood. Head resting on her shoulder.   
He was shivering.  
"We need to get those hands looked at."   
Malcolm held his tattered hands out in front of him. He'd not even noticed they were injured.   
"I'll drive you both." A voice behind them, bought them back to reality.   
"I'm Simon. Simon McPherson. You can leave your car. One of my boys will take care of it.   
You'll be Mr and Mrs Tucker I assume?"  
"Yes.....but how.....?"  
"I'm guessing you were on your way to my cottage.....it's down the way, about a mile and a half."   
"I'll get the wife to have something prepared for you, when you've been seen to. I'll wait with you and drive you back. Shouldn't be too long. They'll not be busy." 

oOo

A soft orange glow, as the fire flickered and crackled.   
Malcolm and Sam sat on the rug in front of it, wrapped together in a tartan throw.   
Bathed and clean and tended to, his hands taped and mended, both comfortable and warm.   
Bellies full of the most delicious beef casserole, and mellow with red wine.   
Malcolm was staring into the flames, watching the embers changing colour, the white ash burn off and disappear up the chimney.   
Sam's head nodded with weariness.   
"Don't know how I got her out." Malcolm mused quietly, kissing his wife's hair.   
"Somehow the strength just came. It was weird."  
"Adrenaline." Sam replied sleepily.   
"When I heard that explosion......oh, God Malc......I can't tell you what went through my head."   
"Don't think about it, Sam.........I'm fine. More to the point..... Morag's fine. Thank God I went to all those fucking survival classes when I worked at Number 10.......in case of terrorist attack or Armageddon or whatever......never thought I'd actually put any of it into practice!"   
"Morag is alive because you did."   
Sam leaned up and captured her husband's mouth, pulling him down with her into a lingering kiss.  
"This is a beautiful place." She whispered, "just you and me......the fireside and a furry rug."   
Malcolm grinned and raised his eyebrows knowingly.   
"The perfect spot. I've had naughty dreams about fucking you on a furry hearth rug....."  
"Time to make the dream a reality then....." She murmured, as she kissed him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Marvellous prompt. Hope you like what I did with it Petersgal !! Bet it wasn't what you expected!!


End file.
